Crediting Garry Shandling’s HBO series “The Larry Sanders Show” as the starting point for the new age of television, TV writer Robert Lloyd examines the comedian, the man and the show in an analysis in the Los Angeles Times. Lloyd writes that the show, which earned critical acclaim and 56 Emmy nominations during its run from 1992-1998, was something that hadn’t been seen before.

“It’s a show that didn’t settle for light or dark, for funny or not funny, for good people or bad; it was farcical and naturalistic at once, emotionally naturalistic, visually new — it had a documentary swing based on the exigencies of a low budget — critical and compassionate, hilarious and deep,” Lloyd writes. “It is a box to hold everything. And everything it was proceeded from the creator-star’s demands not just for a new kind of series but a new way of making one, with consciousness and (a word he used repeatedly) ‘courage.'”